E-Musings Mon Immorata

Cautionary Tales for All Microsoft Anti-Spyware is now in v1.0.509. The upgrade's worthwhile. Also Thunderbird 1.0+ brings in-line spell checking (using the Openoffice.org Myspell engine?) but the upgrade breaks older extensions. Ditton of Firefox 1.0+ which works faster but with fewer extensions. And a couple of free Mozilla tweakers... Boy! Have I some hot software for you this week. But first, let's take a moment to learn why it's important to upgrade Microsoft Anti-Spyware (Beta). This (for-now) free-to-use security software protects the computer against known spyware, pop-up ads, web site controls attempting to modify the browser default settings. And blocks access to your private (stored) information like browser passwords. Beta update 1.0.509 was necessitated after Microsoft found Anti-Spyware being targeted by a new generation of viruses. Other changes include improving and extending the real-time protection agents and adding new threat categories. From a user perspective the updated version looks better with a more intuitive navigation interface. Manages system resources better. And works faster; both while scanning and updating its signature database. The previous version would seemingly lock-up while updating. Also new is an ability to hide the Anti-Spyware icon from the system tray. Unfortunately in its present form Anti-Spyware alone is not powerful enough. I recently, based on recommendation made in Brian Livingstone's Windows Secrets newsletter, added Webroot SpySweeper to my arsenal. Available as a 30-day trial version, this software uses a subscription model for its personal edition. And includes real-time shields for Internet Explorer (e.g. default startup and Search pages, Favorites, tracking cookies), the Windows Hosts file, monitors memory, and can block spyware installation attempts in real time. Microsoft Anti-Spyware is still missing anti-cookie features. And I depend on a combination of Ad-Aware SE and Spybot Search & Destroy to root out cookies. Surprisingly SpySweeper found a tracking cookie from Brilliant Digital on my computer that the other tools failed to identify. I get quite suspicious of any software (in spite of its presumably best intentions) that detects something so specific that none of the other tools find it. There's a fair amount of web static that Microsoft Anti-Spyware protects only Windows. And by extension Internet Explorer. Yet does nothing for alternate browser like Firefox and Opera. But if you carefully consider the facts, its Internet Explorer that so susceptible to spyware and dangerous ActiveX controls. Using other browsers is a makes for a far safer online experience. Over the past few weeks I've been extensively checking out some free tools. Here's my take on the Firefox Preloader that as the name implies preloads the Firefox browser into memory making for a faster startup. You can also customize the browser's settings. And if you prefer unload Firefox while keeping the preloader utility active. I would like to mention that the overall increase using such tweaks is marginal at best. What really controls Firefox startup is the number of extensions that need to be loaded. Unfortunately, in its current form you need a minimum of 4-5 extensions for a decent browsing experience. Power browsers like I have to install up to 7, which has a detrimental effect on the initial startup time. The free Mozilla Knife, developed by Patrick Kolla better known for Spybot Search & Destroy, is Mozilla Thunderbird tweaker to change the default sort order of mailing accounts. Thunderbird creates accounts sequentially But this is not the most logical of groupings. Power users may want to directly modify the PREFS.JS file, but Mozilla Knife is for the hesitant. Mozilla Thunderbird fans will be interested to know there's a new 1.0+ build that includes an inline spell checker. While this feature is still nowhere like what Outlook using Microsoft Word as the email editor is capable of. Its a great beginning. However, install this upgrade with caution as it will break any installed extensions; most of which work only with Thunderbird 1.0. You'll need to modify the EXTENSIONS.RDF file and increase the max version number to 1.0+ before you upgrade to the new version. You can also review the Thunderbird Roadmap to see what features have been developed, or will be included shortly in this excellent email client. Firefox too is available in a 1.0+ Beta version. And again, this will break most installed extensions and themes when you upgrade. I found out about the incompatibilities the hard way. Just after I installed an RSS feed reader called NewsMonster. This promised me the moon. But effectively trashed my carefully nurtured (from Firefox 0.8) installation. And forced me to delete everything; including my Firefox profile folder and all my settings. Before I could get the browser working again. Ever since Popcorn, my favorite low-overhead email client, became true pay ware. And is only available as a restricted-to-one account demo. I've been looking for a worthwhile alternate. I tried out ePrompter which supports interfacing with web-mail services like Yahoo, Hotmail and Rediffmail. Yet includes annoyances like a screen saver and a very unintuitive interface coupled with a mail reader that often chokes on HTML messages. I recently found JBMail that reads and removes individual messages directly from a POP3 server. It also supports SMTP, SSL/TLS, message attachments and SMTP authentication. Messages are stripped of inline images, scripts and HTML tags. But I noticed this approach destroys the formatting of mails sent from Outlook. JBMail also supports PGP (requires external GnuPG installed). If you use the Gaim multi-service instant messaging client, watch out for incomplete upgrade documentations. There's a new, significantly improved Gaim 1.1.3 out now. However, the download page doesn't mention that this version works only with GTK 2.5 or later. Gaim 1.1.2 works with GTK 2.4. And if you try upgrading only the Gaim core, you will get a runtime error. And to wrap have you hear the rumors of a new Internet Explorer 7 that will supposedly be released in mid-2005. The bad news is that this will work only with Windows XP SP2 and later versions of Windows. I'm hoping that not all Beta sites have taken Microsoft's threats about leaking software builds to heart. We might just strike gold with an early beta. Nothing much is know about the new features planned. But anti-phishing, pop-up blocking, and improved security seem to be cornerstones. The official IEBlog has more. That's it for this week. More next time. Stay Safe. Click Here to Email Me